Iceland's Wow airline has stopped flights and says passengers needing to travel should book with other airlines. Its website says: "Wow Air has ceased operation. All Wow Air flights have been cancelled." The carrier, which started flights in 2012 and has 11 aircraft, had been in funding talks with investors. It said some airlines may offer flights at a reduced rate, so-called rescue fares, and it would publish information on those when it becomes available. (www.bbc.co.uk) Más...

Wow!, I can't say I am surprised to see them go bust. Over expanded and retreated too quickly, and of course there is the whole question of who raised the funds to start Wow Air, and how the investors go about seeking their $$$ back, and of course the passengers stranded in EWR and airports as of today trying to make other arrangements, getting refunds etc. .....

I was on the last ever WW departure from KEF. The cabin crew and pilots didn't seem to know this was coming, and if they did they kept if under wraps. Let's face it: any company that chooses purple as its primary color is doomed to failure.

"If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline..."

Those words of Richard Branson ring so true about about several European cheap ticket airlines. They are not failing due to a lack of passengers. Their planes are full. They stop flying because they are out of cash. Are the ticket prices too low? No, the problem is their taxes are too high. European governments suck so much money out of the economy it is almost impossible to start a new business there.

What does the EU do with all that money? They waste it on socialism. Morons.

It’s all about $$$. They didn’t have enough to keep operations going and they couldn’t pull out a last minute investment deal.

Running an airline is extremely difficult, especially as a newcomer. The competition will be ruthless against you, and established carriers, low cost and legacy, have much deeper pockets to enable them to weather bad economic times and take losses on routes to eliminate competition.

Typically big airlines find their profits and survivability in having their own maintenance. It serves the purpose of setting maintenance costs to balance the amount of money taken out of the flying department. Big profits in tickets allows pulling profits into the maintenance section where owners profit more than with airline stocks that pay dividends to the public. So I don't think WOW had their own maintenance since that's a big cost. Or the owners played the old game of get started with available routes so they are in the system so that they can move to another region not needing to have routes available. Rules are routes have to be open to get started. But, once started you can move around making your own routes. That is what Hawaii's airline called Island Air did. They always wanted into CONUS but couldn't find open routes. So the owner took the cheap route having pilots pay for their own type ratings then bankrupted the company and took off to California to start up in the original area he first tried unable to buy routes.

Maybe watch where the owners go or even where their associates tried getting into before this dilemma.

What a bunch of a-hats...they were selling tickets right up to time of ceasing operations? That is, AFAIC, fraud.""I will never be able to forgive myself for not taking action sooner, since it is evident that Wow was an amazing airline and we were on the right track to do great things again."..hey, Skuli. you should have taken action YEARS ago...the only thing WOW was amazing at these past few years, was their terrible service!

What I want to know is why they had to wrap up operations in hours instead of days. What sort of bankruptcy law would force (or even allow) an airline's default in obligations to passengers mid-journey to be _that_ disorderly?

Several reasons. The moment you announce bankruptcy, all access to funds to keep the operation going will be cut off. No credit for things like fuel, catering or navigation and airport fees. Also, the moment you announce you're shuttering the business, your employees and customers will abandon you in about 5 seconds. The employees will want to be first in line at the next employer and the customers would be too nervous about losing their trip. In short, your operation would not be able to function.

in fact, iceland cannot support two carriers inlight of the rush to fly there by more and more carriers. It is a wonderful idylic sweet island, whose inhabitants still like americans, whose natural features will not be despoiled by hoards of tourists, but idle aircraft, under -utilized aircraft exist for most airlines, so off to iceland. It became a self-limiting function yesterday, and more to come.

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